Japan’s Stealth Fighter Gambit

[tanlixiang28776]

Is it true the F 2's radar is ineffective beyond 40 Km?

 

[Skull and Bones]

You don't know how good the J-20 could be.

Emphasis on the highlighted part.

---------- Post added at 12:29 AM ---------- Previous post was at 12:28 AM ----------

Is it true the F 2's radar is ineffective beyond 40 Km?

False, somewhere i read it's about 160 km.

This is the AESA radar built by Mitsubishi

It has around 808 T/R modules, now do you think this kind of radar can have so poor range?

 

[Penguin]

In military matters no.

Their military hardware is either

1. license produced American weapons. ie Kawasaki OH 1, Mitsubishi F 15, Mitsubishi f 4

2. directly bought from America. ie Lockheed P 3, MLRS

3. Heavily based on existing US platforms. ie F 2, CX

4. Full of American subsystems, and armnament. ie Kongo class

5. average analogues of other modern equipment self produced.

They are perhaps 50 percent self sufficient on military weapons. Most of the truly high end weapons like fighters, and missiles are either directly imported or license produced.

So its actually you who has no idea what you are talking about.

And this is different from China in what way?
1. Mig 19 (J-6 / Q-5), Mig 21 (J-7), Tu-16 (H6), Il-28 (H5)
2. Su 30 MKK
3. Su-27 > J11
4/5. Recent naval units.

....

 

[SomeGuy]

They did develop it indigenously, which was later examined examined by Raytheon officials and found to be lacking in some areas and software glitches and has about 810 T/R modules. But has advanced jamming capability.

Emphasis on the highlighted part.

---------- Post added at 12:29 AM ---------- Previous post was at 12:28 AM ----------



False, somewhere i read it's about 160 km.

This is the AESA radar built by Mitsubishi

It has around 808 T/R modules, now do you think this kind of radar can have so poor range?

Just wondering because the J/APG-1 desgination makes it sound like an American radar that's all.

 

[gambit]

Is it true the F 2's radar is ineffective beyond 40 Km?

That is a bit misleading. Effective radar range heavily depends on physical array dimension. Of course, you can simply pour as much power into a certain antenna as your power supply can give, but then your system would be no more effective than the MIG-25's radar where it could 'burn through' any jamming but the system was so crappy that it could give the pilot no more than the target's general direction. Personally, I prefer target resolutions over distance, those are: altitude, speed, heading, and aspect angle. Kinda like quality over quantity. With today's smaller aircrafts but increasing lethality per aircraft, resolution cell is even more important than ever...

Definition: radar resolution cell

The volume of space that is occupied by a radar pulse and that is determined by the pulse duration and the horizontal and vertical beamwidths of the transmitting radar. Note: The radar cannot distinguish between two separate objects that lie within the same resolution cell.

An AESA system is far superior in beamforming than the classical concave or flat planar array in creating very tight beams. The tighter the beam, the smaller the resolution cell. The smaller the resolution cell, the more difficult it is for small aircrafts to escape detection or hide their true numbers by grouping themselves together and appearing as a single blob.

The AWACS's job is to find that blob and tell the fighters where to go. But as the fighters approaches that blob, it would behoove each of them to know exactly how many of the enemy they are facing so they can place themselves in as advantageous positions as possible.

 

[gambit]

Do you know what is the proposed engine? Is Japan going to design one from scratch?? Or will they use one from P&W or GE?? Wikipedia says that its going to be developed indigenously and its 10-20 tons of thrust. Its wiki so I take it with a grain of salt but 10-20K thrust per engine is incredibly low. Its also supposedly smaller than the Gripen, which make no sense (your internal weapons bay is going to be small as hell). It would have issues with combat range.

My opinion is that this is more of an intellectual exercise, albeit a narrowly focused one, on the 'hows' of designing a genuinely low radar observable aircraft body from paper. If the Japanese are to design one such aircraft for deployment, we can scratch off what we see here, even more so if American technical assistance is offered.

 

[siegecrossbow]

Although I think the realization of the Shinshin is unlikely I am not gonna make any stupid remarks about it (we all know what happened last time people made stupid remarks). I think Japan has the know how to build a fifth generation fighter. Really depends on whether the Japanese government want to spend the money on it/whether political issues will bring an end to the program.